Sunday, October 18, 2009

Garda databases still open to abuse?

A garda undermined a series of major anti-crime surveillance operations by passing details of car registrations belonging to undercover detectives onto a gang of armed robbers.

The garda is the subject of an internal investigation which is looking into a number of officers who are suspected of being on the payroll of separate Dublin criminals. The garda was in regular contact with a crime figure who is facing charges related to serious criminal activity.

When the criminal gang suspected that they might be under surveillance, they supplied the garda with a list of car registrations they had encountered. The garda checked the car details on the force’s Pulse IT system and informed the gang if the cars were part of the Garda fleet.

In several cases, the garda was able to identify vehicles that were being used by an undercover Garda unit. To avoid detection, the officer got junior uniformed gardaí to log into the Pulse system using their own passwords - as the system records a digital imprint of every log-in by a member using their unique password, The Sunday Business Post understands.